Dust to Dust – A poem

Dust to Dust

A scream escapes me as my body goes to the nether
Disintegrating into grains of dust to fall up into the desolate and
be carried away down a flowing river of no direction.
My mind, my soul, and my will follow into the oblivion after;
each seperate from one another to divide themselves
into a thousand times a thousand
pieces…
My will holds tight to once piece of each as I flow
for I will not let them go
their seperate ways
I will not lose me.
For I am me.
I am me
forever.
by Philip Wardlow 2012

A Tidbit to my Novel I'm working on...and how my own characters must hate me.

I am always thinking of the next best story….but that thinking distracts me from the actual story I’m working on at that time….

I so often will get from anywhere three to eight pages into a story I’m working only to find myself having to put it down (temporarily mind you) to start on whole new idea. I JUST have to start on it or else it will just leave my brain never to return…I have get into the idea for a few pages…I just have to…or else I’ll lose it…I just know it.

In the past few months, I have been working on three stories and my novel…I love all four stories equally in their own way.

Needless to say ALL four have been suffering from lack of real attention….One of my characters has been sitting in a deep dark hole and is bruised and battered and very afraid and desperate to get out of his predicament (he doesn’t know how much trouble he’s really in…..he he) Oh just you wait my dear friend . He’s been lying there for a weeks waiting for his story to go forward.

I have a cast of characters in one story in various stages of their life waiting to accomplish deeds of heroism or not so very not heroic acts…one guy has killed his wife…the other is a prisoner by small demons …and another is about to do something awful to himself at school and all their worlds are destined to collide….sounds interesting huh…I bet you wish you could read this one…me to… They’ve been in stasis for a few weeks as well.

I’ve got these other two characters and they’ve been moving….(in molasses but they have been moving, and the story is oh so close to be finished..I can’t wait to show to you it on here….but I think they all are really starting to hate me…I mean if I were them I would …..I’ve trapped them in limbo…I’ve got to get them out….I can hear them calling to me in my sleep when I dream..

Have you felt ever felt that way about your characters for not finishing their story fast enough? (or not at all!)

Well I am regaining focus and I am going to finish all those damn stories by hook or by crook (I’ve always loved that phrase)

Also here and below is a small opener to my very first full length Novel entitled tentatively “The Thing Under the Bridge” that I plan on finishing by – cross your fingers - the end of January 2013. It will be a Young Adult Category Novel in the Urban Fantasy Genre


Excerpt from “The Thing Under the Bridge” Working Title -

I have always believed in magic. I don’t care what you say. You can doubt all you want. There is a hidden world which we cannot see sitting right in front of our faces, most everyone is too busy, too
blind, or too stupid to see it. I see it in the trees as the ethereal distance winds kiss the leaves as it flies through their branches. I spy it dancing in the fire amidst the embers at night; like little tiny sprites hopping from log to log amidst the flames playing a game of tag. I smell it in a wild rose in a crowded field of jostling weeds flinging its pheromones to attract the butterflies to alight on its silken petals. I hear it in the babbling brook as the water plays upon the rocks behind my home whispering to the frogs as it travels on downriver. I feel it in the rough stone I caress in the palm of my hand; an ancient power from ages past unearthed from the deep bowels of the earth from the crumbs of a mighty stone titan long dead. It is everywhere if you would only choose to see. The
magic speaks to me because I choose to listen and I almost understand what it
is saying…

Chapter 1 – Reality Sets In

I tasted the blood that trickled down to my upper lip from my nose. It had a sweet metallic taste. I liked the taste of my blood. I am not a weird person don’t get me wrong, I’m not into to that kind of stuff. I just like to sometimes pretend that I’m Conan the Barbarian and I’m backed up against the wall and that I’m fighting an angry horde of ghoulish creatures hell-bent on gutting me like a fish and eating my entrails as I watch. I have my sword hacking and slashing and limbs are flying and I’m scratched all to hell and I’m bleeding from a dozen different wounds and I’m smiling insanely because this could be my last day alive so why not go out smiling like a true warrior would upon meeting his death well met in battle. Yeah, I like to have my mind go to places like that when I would be rather be anywhere than where I am right now.

“Hold him down dammit he’s a squirmer! Fucking idiot, you see what he did to Carlos? He’s crazy man!” Carlos had it coming, I told myself as I lay on the ground struggling under two other boys who each probably outweighed me by a hundred pounds. They wouldn’t have caught me if one of the bystanders hadn’t tripped me while I was trying to get away. Trying to get away, that’s all I ever do, until now.

I am not a violent person but I will admit it felt pretty good to see the plastic lunch tray connect solidly against the side of Carlos’s head and watch him go down in a daze, not to mention the stunned looks of his buddies who were now holding me down who put him up to flipping my lunch tray to the ground as I had walked by. It was classic man, just classic.

“What the hell are you smiling about you sick bastard. I am so gonna you end, just wait. I always knew you were a weird little fucker. That’s why you don’t have any friends.”

Aah, Jake the jerk off, as I like to call him, a man, or boy better yet, of not many words. I guess his Dad couldn’t buy him vocabulary to stuff inside that brain of his. I’m thinking his Dads more the type that likely bought’em a good weight set and a big box of protein bars cuz he was crushing the hell out of my left shoulder with his knees as I lay there on the ground.

“Get the fuck off me!” I yelled at them while my face was being pressed firmly into the dirt. I might as well been yelling at the moon for all the good it did. I was a punching bag to them. A distraction out of their boring day of the life they called school. I provided a service to them I guess. They needed a reason to feel special while they were here. Everyone wants to feel special.

“Hey watch this Neil.” Jake said to the other kid that was holding me. It was amazing but Neil was actually more stupid than Jake was. I’m thinking the Smithsonian would have been really pleased to know a Neanderthal was still walking the earth. Neil had a prominent forehead, squashed face which held a dull look and knuckles that dragged the ground as he walked almost upright. He would have look great stuffed and mounted. It was a wonder he could tie his own shoes. Oh wait, was that Velcro for laces instead? I had a pretty good view at his feet at this particular time so I had a moment to check them out.

“Whut?” Said Neil responding dumbly to him bent over next to my ear. Then I heard it, the long drawing in sound of phlegm back into the throat.

It landed with a splat on the top of my forehead and traveled like a river down into my right eye blinding me and causing me to lose it entirely. I thrashed and heaved and went into what I like to call my insane berserker barbarian rage. This had little effect but it did cause Jake to fall off from kneeling on my back which eased some of the pain I was feeling. I’ll take what I can get.

I realized in that instance, that the audiences that come to fighting events come to watch entirely for selfish reasons. It is not to support the fighter; they want something out of it for all the money they plunked down. Apparently being stuck at school was the payment enough for all the other students just standing around watching my shame to unfold. They wanted to be entertained by my pain in some sick way, like the involuntary morbid thrill you get in watching a horror movie unfold knowing you feel bad for the victim, but not really because but what can you do? They convinced themselves they are just a spectator to it all, that they are allowed to be insulated from it, please don’t ask for me to lend a hand they say, your crazy. I was just another pathetic soap opera to be talked about between their friends and family, to be kept at a distance and to not bog their day down. Their hand was on the dimmer switch that controlled the light of my life into theirs and they could choose to let in however much they thought they could take. Right now all those hands on all those switches were set to full off. I think I hated them more in that instance than the ones who picked on me on a daily basis.

“Break it up! Break it up!” A loud high screeching of a woman’s voice cut through the chaos that was my crazed mind and through the crowd of onlookers as well. Mrs. Kitchen, a teacher and woman of enormous proportions waddled over her way through the ring of kids surrounding us to see what had caught everyone’s attention. I heard her gasp out aloud so theatrically when she came upon the scene that I almost laughed out loud.

Jake and Neil quickly let me go to show her they weren’t just trying to shove my head into the dirt and make me eat it. I saw the crowd starting to disperse around me, the bloodshed was over; be about your way miscreants.

I slowly got up from the ground and wiped the spit and grass clippings from my face with the sleeve of my shirt.

“Would someone like to tell me what’s going on? I found Carlos back there picking himself off the ground and now I find Calvin doing pretty the same thing over here. What’s going on?” Her voice went to a higher octave on the shrill level factor if that was possible and she put her hands on her very wide hips, tapping her foot impatiently expecting an answer. Yep, she was your typical stereotype, they do exist.

“He hit Carlos for no reason.” Neil said pointing at me like he was fingering me like some criminal in a line up. Neil just kept quiet.

“Is this true Calvin?” She asked.

“Yes and no,” I said, “Yes, I hit him, but I wouldn’t say it was for no reason. He had it coming, they like to provoke me.” I said and be damned with the consequences I was done caring anymore.

“Let’s see what Mr. Granderson has to say about all this. Let’s go.” She marched us into the schools office area where we sat and waited while all the parents were called.

More to come…

My Beautiful Dead Girl – A Poem

Haunted eyes
wrapped in misery.
You are already dead,
so why should you feel pain?

Pain is your purgatory
little girl, a grand gift
from scales that can never
be balanced in your favor.

Haunted eyes they may be,
but I see defiance, strength,
lingering deep, always
ready to rise to the surface.

Never did death look so beautiful
A perfection in form chiseled
from stone beaten up and torn
down by the elements.

You wear your cloak well,
dark and tear stained, wrapped
tight around a body that
still flies free.

You are my beautiful dead girl.
with cold hands clenching tight around
a warm heart
that beats just for you.
by Philip Wardlow

The Dark Tree - A poem

It swayed and creaked in
the wind.
The black silken crows
gave a queer semblance of
life to the tree,
Its bare branches covered
with a multitude perched like
the clinging of leaves.
It swayed and it creaked
and spoke of its sins,
Dark feathers fluttered,
as if to fool a passerby’s eye
that life still dwelt in the trees dead limbs.
None made a sound, not a caw
not a screech, no utterance did they speak;
for you see they had been given a task long ago,
to bear silent witness to the migration
of lost souls.
For no man,
should ever die alone.
So they perched and they preened
as the body swayed and creaked
on the rope below.
by Philip Wardlow

Crushed Box – A Snippet from a little boy’s life

I was nine years old and my brother Sam was eight. It was a late Sunday afternoon on a warm bright blue sky day in the middle of May. We were both smiling and grinning ear to ear because we had just scored the biggest prize ever in our little lives. A gigantic box, longer in all it’s in dimensions than we were in height, it was a monster. We had just pulled it out of a CARTON ONLY dumpster behind the factory building pretty close to where we lived.

It was to be a grand addition to our makeshift fort we already had built in our backyard from the previous day. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were. We only had a block left to drag it, and it was heavy work. It wasn’t every day something like this came along so we were very determined to get it home.

As my brother and I pushed and prodded the behemoth of a box down the street my little mind was already working furiously to figure how it would be cut and worked into our current structure. I was thinking this was going to be command central for all the adventures for the days to come.

“What’s the box for Felix?” a voice in front of us asked as it approached us barring our progress down the street.

I poked my head from around the box and groaned inwardly. Three boys stood there directly in our path down the sidewalk, two of them were Anton and Anthony, eight year identical twins, led by their twelve-year-old big brother named Terence. They were our neighbors about three houses down from us.

I hated them. They took delight in making me and my brother’s life miserable at any turn they could find when they ran across us.

For example, once I had been given a watermelon by my mother’s friend who had grown it in her garden. She had lived down the street some four houses away from our own. (Yep right next to Terence’s). I was walking home with it clutching it in both arms with my little hands wrapped around it tight. My mom loved watermelon she was going to love this nice surprise. Suddenly, I was pushed hard from behind. I stumbled and fell forward watching the watermelon fly from my arms and end up in broken chunks all over the hot summer cement of the sidewalk. I didn’t look back at who had done it. I knew. I ran home crying with their laughter at my back.

Terence approached us and our box with the twins in tow. He was tall for his age and even slightly muscular. His dark skin was darker than mine by ten times as much. I always thought of my mom and how she took her coffee, black with two sugars but no cream when I looked at him. Me, I was cream poured in you might say, because I guess my mom had been white and my dad was black whereas I knew both of Terence’s parents were black. I knew that much back then I guess. My hair was jet black, slightly wavy and cut short against the side of my head while Terence’s dark black hair was braided and pulled tight against his scalp in what most black people called cornrows. The braids trailed down the side of his head and to the back until they came out from his head hanging down to his shoulders. He smiled a friendly smile as he walked over to me but I knew it was fake.

He put a hand gently on the box, and looked up at it appraising it with his eyes.

“It’s ours.” I blurted out, regretting it the moment I said it. Terence didn’t like it when you were defiant.

“It’s our now.” He simply said and came up to me and pushed me out-of-the-way where I fell to the ground hard. He nodded at his two brothers who took it as a sign to rush the box.

I got up and grabbed my brother’s hand and walked quickly away down the street. At the time, I told myself I was protecting my younger brother but inside I knew different. Fear had always been my friend. The farther I was away from them the less scared I became and the angrier I got. Then Terence yelled out to me and my brother asking if we wanted our box back.

We turned back to them thinking just for an instant that he might actually mean it. I took one hesitant step back towards them.

Then they laughed and started to destroy the box. They kicked at it, punched it, and ripped at the joints and corners with their hands, all the while laughing like it wasn’t the biggest joke in the world. Finally the box collapsed in on itself with all the beating it had undergone. Terence then climbed on top of it and began to jump up and down crushing with his feet. His brothers joined into until it was just a mangled piece of paperboard on the ground.

All the while this was happening; I stood there holding my younger brother’s hand as he began to cry next to me. A thunder began to roll in me with all the momentum of a giant wave rolling towards the shore. Gathering, gathering, collecting in strength until it would crash.

“You nigger!” I yelled with all the power my little voice could carry. I put behind the word all the hurt I felt, all the anger that had built up over the months, days and weeks of their constant bullying. I put it all into that one word and flung it like a rock straight at him. Some instinct inside told me that this one word would work and I had grabbed it and used it without thought.

“What did you call me?!” he asked. He wasn’t laughing anymore. He looked stunned.

I yelled it again and again. My mind railed the word over and over inside my head.
He didn’t make a move to chase me. He just stood there with his arms at his sides and fists clenched and then calmly but loudly yelled at me.

 “Tomorrow on the way home from school, I’m gonna get you then!” was all he said. Then he and his brothers simply walked away towards home leaving the crushed box in the middle of the sidewalk.

I walked home scared. I went to sleep scared. I woke up scared. I went to school scared. I sat in class all day scared. Then the bell rang to go home.

It was about a ten to fifteen minute walk from school to my house. Terence was a middle schooled and got out earlier than me nearby in the neighborhood. I knew he would be waiting for me somewhere along the way home. If I was quick and ran nonstop all the way home, he might not even see me to catch me. So I ran.

I ran past friends in the hall not saying a word, I busted through the double doors of the school and sprinted across the street ignoring the crossing guard who yelled at me saying I was going to be in trouble tomorrow when I came back to school. I thought to myself I’m trying to stay alive today so I can come back to school tomorrow.

I didn’t look to my left I didn’t look to my right. I just ran like a bullet towards home with my target being my front door. I dodged my way around slow-moving kids in my way, at the next street I crossed against the light beating out a car turning the corner earning me a blaring horn in my ear.
Up ahead was the street next to my own. All I had to do was to cross it and then make a quick cut through the parking lot between the restaurant and the Goodwill Store and I was home free. No sign of Terence. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he never intended to show; maybe he was more talk than anything else.

I crossed the street in a run but slowed to a quick walk when I hit the sidewalk and entered the parking lot. I could see my house across the short field from the parking lot. I felt a small cocoon of safety settle over me seeing my home in sight.

Then there he was out of nowhere like he had appeared from thin air; right in from of me at the very edge of the parking lot. He ran at me. I couldn’t move. My mind screamed to run but my body didn’t want to cooperate. He grabbed the top of my shirt near my neck with both hands and shoved me heard against a parked car.

His eyes were wide and brown and they burned into me. I could almost feel the pressure from them pushing against my own.

“Why did you call me that!” he yelled at me pushing me hard again against the car.
“I don’t know I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was mad. I’m sorry.” Tears started to come into my eyes.

He held me against the car just staring into my eyes. Then I saw something different in his than what I had just before. It wasn’t anger or menace. It was pain. Pain showed in his eyes. Deeply. I felt it to my core.

“I’m sorry Terence. I never should have said it. I never will again I promise, I promise. I’m sorry.” and I meant it to.

I didn’t say it from fear. I had said it because in the end I truly was sorry. Yes he was a bully, and he treated my bad but he didn’t deserve what I had said. I felt ashamed of myself in that instant with his eyes looking back at me full of pain. I never thought he could feel pain, never thought it could touch him. No, that’s a lie, I told myself in that instant. I knew it could touch him, that’s why I had said it, but I had chosen to ignore what I had done.

I hung my head.

He let me go, hands slowly releasing me to fall down at his sides.

“See that you never do say it again.” he said and walked away.

I stood there in the parking lot for quite a while, not moving, and barely breathing with my head still hanging down staring at the ground.

I found the strength to pick my head up and realized as I made my slow walk home I didn’t know myself at all.

The End

I have always loved the author who could take a character and make you love/hate him or her and then at the end of that story actually make you care if they triumphed, lived, loved , or died.
I am currently in the process of becoming just that type of author (for now you must label me a writer) and this is my first step into marketing myself to the people who might be reading my stuff one day. I hope to hone my craft in the coming months and years through blood and sweat (not to many tears). I hope to toll with bloody fingers to pen and paper and the constant punching of the keyboard. I wish the fantastic to come to life and breath as I dredge them up out of the lighted but darks depths inside my head and put them to paper for your enjoyment and my own of course.
In the coming months, years I will keep you up to date on where I am at in the submission process with all my stories…these things take a while but I’m always pessimistically optimistic about the events in my life…
I will try to keep you entertained with some writing of my mine from the past and recent present, such as some experimental stories, flash fiction, excerpts from novellas or novels I may be working on or have finished with and sent on to publishers for submission. I will also show you some of my various poetry which may entail aspects of fantasy, horror, and the occasional dark matter in life to philiosophical observations of every day life that hope may all be interesting, or thought provoking hopefully.
My style is a work in a progress but I’m getting there. Hope you enjoy!
Thanks for listening…and watch out for the shadows in the corners ..things like to hide there and just stare at you.

Until this site gets off the ground check out my other blogging site under my name:  www.philipwardlow.com or my Scribd Submission section: http://www.scribd.com/PhilipWardlow/info